Tommaso Pizzari
Edward Grey Institute, University of Oxford (UK)
Title
Sex and the chicken
Abstract
The recent realisation that females of many species obtain semen from multiple males before producing a set of eggs has revolutionised
the way we understand sexual selection, leading to the study of post-insemination mechanisms: sperm competition and female selection
of sperm. The sexually promiscuous chicken is emerging as an ideal model system to study avian sperm competition and female sperm
selection.
In this talk I will present some recent work illustrating how the study of sexually promiscuous model systems such as the chicken
can help us understand the complexities of the operation of sexual selection.
Biography
PhD at Sheffield University
Post-docs at Sheffield and Sweden
Lecturer at the University of Leeds
2005 - Lecturer in Ornithology at Oxford University
Selected recent publications
- Pizzari T, Løvlie H & Cornwallis CK 2004 Sex-specific, counteracting responses to inbreeding in a bird. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 271, 2115-2121.
- Pizzari T, Cornwallis CK, Løvlie H, Jakobsson S & Birkhead TR 2003 Sophisticated sperm allocation in a bird. Nature 426, 70-74.
- Birkhead TR & Pizzari T 2002 Post-insemination sexual selection. Nature Rev. Genet. 3, 262-73.
- Pizzari T & Birkhead TR 2000 Female feral fowl eject sperm of subdominant males. Nature 405, 787-789.
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